[Books published in Spain on smoking].

Tobacco dependence, considered for a long time as a habit and, more recently, as an addiction, has many bad effects in health. The objective of this study was to analyse books published in this field in Spain. Books indexed in the ISBN Spanish database in CD-ROM (updated to 1993) dealing with addiction to tobacco, that included one of the following words: tabac*, tabak*, tabaq*, fuma*, fumad*, nicotine*, alquitran*, antitabac*, antitabaq*, cigarro*, cigarri*, exfumad*, pipa*, puro*, picadura* or filtro, were included in the study. Authors, ISBN classification, year of publication, language (of publication and original) and publishers were descriptively analysed. One hundred and four books were analysed. The highest number was published during the period 1990-1993 (42%); being 1993 (n = 15) and 1991 (n = 14) the most productive years. A big increase was observed from 1985. A great number (76% of books, n = 79) was written by personal authors and the 14% (n = 14) by public organizations. Most of the books (n = 88; 85%); were published in Spanish, followed by Catalan (n = 13; 13%); 21 books (20%) were translations: most of them from English (n = 12; 60%) or from French (n = 3; 14%). Forty six per cent of books was published by trade publishers and 31% by public organizations. According to the ISBN classification, these books were grouped in 20 different topics; but, most of them (70%) were included in three of these topics: hygiene (n = 42, 40%), pharmacology-toxicology-drugs (n = 18, 17%) and pathology-diseases and medical/therapeutical clinical practice (n = 14; 13%). The number of books published in Spain dealing with tobacco dependence has increased very much from 1985; it suggests that interest in this area in SPain has also increased. Most of the books are published in Spanish, and the most frequently translated language is English. These books are basically published by trade publishers and public organizations. These results have to be considered taking into account that fighting against consumption of tobacco and tobacco dependence is a relatively new area of research and study.